11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 1/14

Abstract

Increasing attention to pollinators and their role in providing ecosystem services has revealed a paucity of studies on long-termpopulation trends of most insect pollinators in many parts of the world. Because targeted monitoring programs are resourceintensive and unlikely to be performed on most insect pollinators, we took advantage of existing collection records to examine long-term trends in northeastern United States populations of 26 species of hawk moths (family Sphingidae) that are presumed to bepollinators. We compiled over 6,600 records from nine museum and 14 private collections that spanned a 112-year period, andused logistic generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) to examine long-term population trends. We controlled for uneven samplingeffort by adding a covariate for list length, the number of species recorded during each sampling event. We found that of the 22species for which there was sufficient data to assess population trends, eight species declined and four species increased indetection probability (the probability of a species being recorded during each year while accounting for effort, climate, and spatialeffects in the GLMMs). Of the four species with too few records to statistically assess, two have disappeared from parts of theirranges. None of the four species with diurnal adults showed a trend in detection probability. Two species that are pests ofsolanaceous crops declined, consistent with a seven-fold drop in the area planted in tobacco and tomato crops. We found someevidence linking susceptibility to parasitoidism by the introduced fly Compsilura concinnata (Tachinidae) to declines. Moths withlarvae that feed on vines and trees, where available evidence indicates that the fly is most likely to attack, had a greater propensityto decline than species that use herbs and shrubs as larval host plants. Species that develop in the spring, before Compsilurapopulations have increased, did not decline. However, restricting the analysis to hawk moth records from areas outside of a“refuge” area where Compsilura does not occur did not significantly increase the intensity of the declines as would be predicted ifCompsilura was the primary cause of declines. Forests have recovered over the study period across most of the northeastern U.S.,but this does not appear to have been a major factor because host plants of several of the declining species have increased inabundance with forest expansion and maturation. Climate variables used in the GLMMs were not consistently related to mothdetection probability. Hawk moth declines may have ecological effects on both the plants pollinated by these species and vertebratepredators of the moths.

Citation: Young BE, Auer S, Ormes M, Rapacciuolo G, Schweitzer D, Sears N (2017) Are pollinating hawk moths declining inthe Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records. PLoS ONE 12(10): e0185683.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683

Editor: Maohua Chen, Northwest A&F University, CHINA

Received: April 18, 2017; Accepted: September 18, 2017; Published: October 5, 2017

Copyright: © 2017 Young et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authorand source are credited.

Data Availability: All records are publicly available at http://www.natureserve.org/conservation-tools/locality-data-northeastern-us-hawk-moths and at Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5435950.v1).

Funding: This study was supported by the Sarah K. de Coizart Perpetual Charitable Trust and the U.S. National ScienceFoundation (award 1136586). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, orpreparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Recent reports of declines in both managed and native pollinators have raised concern about pollination limitation in crops andnatural ecosystems [1], [2], [3]. Among native pollinators, declines have been reported in bumble bees (genus Bombus) [4], [5],other bees [6], avian and bat pollinators, and butterflies [3]. The available data indicate that many wild pollinators have declined inoccurrence and diversity (and abundance for certain species) at local and regional scales in northwestern Europe and NorthAmerica [6], [3]. Concern over the plight of pollinators in the United States led to the development of a national strategy to promote

Published: October 5, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683

Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the NortheasternUnited States? An analysis of collection recordsBruce E. Young , Stephanie Auer , Margaret Ormes , Giovanni Rapacciuolo , Dale Schweitzer , Nicole Sears

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 2/14

the health of pollinators [7]. However, population trends in most pollinator species remain unknown. Many species are small-bodiedand hard to identify in the field, are not commonly sought after by citizen naturalists, or occur in countries with limited resources formonitoring. Identifying strategies for estimating population trends in these species is challenging, but necessary to broaden ourknowledge about conservation status of native pollinators.

Among vertebrate and invertebrate pollinators, most moths are easy to overlook due to their nocturnal activity. Nevertheless, mothpollinator guilds can be diverse and form the basis of complicated pollen-transfer networks [8], [9], [10]. Some plants, such as thewestern prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera praeclara), yucca (Yucca and Hesperoyucca) and senita cacti (Lophocereus schottii),depend exclusively on one or a small number of moth species for pollination [11], [12] [13]. Declines in moth diversity andabundance could therefore lead to disruptions in the plant communities they pollinate [14], [12].

The hawk moths (family Sphingidae), a group of relatively large-bodied and strong flying Lepidoptera, include many pollinatingspecies that typically feed nocturnally (although some do so diurnally) at pale-colored flowers with long corollas and a sweet odor[15], [16], [17]. One species, Manduca sexta, is well known as a model organism for laboratory studies of animal behavior andneurobiology [18], [19]. Evolutionary biologists and ecologists recognize this group as being diverse and important in the study ofinsect-plant interactions in both tropical and temperate ecosystems [20], [21], [17], especially because hawk moth tongue lengthseems to coevolve with plant corolla length [22], [23]. Although the relationship between plants and pollinating animals is morecomplex than simple ‘syndromes’ [24], hawk moths are clearly able to use their typically long tongues to pollinate flowers with longcorollas that exclude other potential pollinators [25]. Some plants pollinated by hawk moths are rare, including members of theorchid, lily, and evening-primrose families (Orchidaceae, Liliaceae, and Onagraceae, respectively; [26], [27], [28]), highlighting thepotential conservation ramifications of hawk moth population declines.

Preliminary evidence suggests that several hawk moth species, along with members of another family of large moths, theSaturniidae, have undergone long-term declines in the northeastern U.S. and adjacent Canada [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34]. As forvirtually all of the world’s more than one million species of insects, quantitative monitoring data are not available to document mostof these declines [35]. Possible causes of declines in hawk moths include climate change, which might cause a mismatch betweenemergence of moth larvae and host plant leaf out; loss of habitat including host plants; forest succession, which has led to long-term compositional changes as northeastern U.S. forests recover from 19 century clearing for agriculture [36], [37]; increasinglevels of artificial lights at night [14]; an introduced parasitoid fly (Compsilura concinnata; Tachinidae) [38]; and changing agriculturalpractices and land use that have caused declines in hosts available for hawk moths with larvae that feed on crop plants [33].Considering the importance of hawk moths in their ecosystems and the diversity of threats they face, the absence of monitoringdata is concerning because declines could be widespread without the conservation community having a means to detect them.

Compsilura has been implicated in declines of numerous moths [39]. The parasitoid, native to Europe, was repeatedly introducedfrom 1906–1986 to control non-native gypsy moths (Lymantria dispar) and other pests. The multivoltine generalist parasitoid neversuccessfully controlled gypsy moth populations, but is now known to attack 200 North American lepidopteran species, includingnumerous hawk moths [40], [39] [33]. Experimental evidence indicates that Compsilura is more effective at attacking hosts duringthe summer than in the spring, and is most frequently recorded attacking hosts on leaves of trees that are situated in a group orforest setting rather than shrubs or herbs [41]. The fly has been found everywhere it has been looked for in the northeastern U.S.,except coastal sand dune habitats in Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket islands, Massachusetts, U.S., where sparsevegetation apparently does not support a succession of potential hosts needed by the multivoltine fly during the spring-to-fall periodof activity [42].

Because of limited resources available for biological surveillance monitoring [43] targeted studies on the diverse hawk moth faunathat are unlikely to occur over broad geographical areas. In this situation, a potential substitute is an analysis of museum andprivate collecting records [44], [45]. Although museum and private collecting efforts will rarely have the temporal or spatial regularityof a targeted study, they have the advantage of covering century-long time scales, large geographic areas, and large numbers ofspecies. However, estimating trends from museum records necessitates addressing issues of recording bias, since these recordswere often collected in an opportunistic manner largely contingent on the context of each recording event [46], [47]. One effectiveapproach to statistically correct for uneven recorder effort in opportunistic data is to use the number of species recorded duringeach sampling visit (the list length, L; sensu [48] as a proxy for recorder effort (e.g., [49], [50], [51], [52], [53]). Adding a covariate forlist length within models of temporal estimates may enable disentangling true absences from failures to detect and record givenspecies, because list length is positively associated with recorder effort and therefore probability of detection [54], [55].Northeastern U.S. Lepidoptera are particularly amenable to this statistical approach as they have been relatively well studied, andprivate collection data can supplement material in museums [33]. Furthermore, an advantage of hawk moths over many otherinsect groups is that most species (except for the Sphinx gordius-S. poecila complex) are readily identified and thereforedeterminations of museum specimens are reliable.

In this study, we focus on the species of hawk moths that breed in the northeastern U.S. and feed as adults and therefore putativelyserve as pollinators (but see [13]). We ask whether we can detect long-term declines for any of these species, while statisticallycorrecting for recorder effort, from museum and private collecting records. We then test five predictions of hypotheses that mayexplain the trends. First, we ask whether the spatial and temporal abundance of records is related to changes in climate that arepredicted to be important to moths, such as cold winters, or hot or wet summers [33]. Second, we test the prediction that ifCompsilura is an important cause of declines, then eliminating records from where the fly does not occur (e.g., the Massachusettssand dune habitats [42]), and thus where moth declines may not have taken place, should result in more significant declines. Third,we test the prediction that species with larvae most exposed to Compsilura, those that feed on trees or vines, should have declinedmore than species with less exposed larvae feeding on understory shrubs and herbs [41]. Fourth, we tested the prediction thatspecies that are present as larvae in May and June, before Compsilura populations increase seasonally, should have declined lessthan species active during the summer months [41], [32]. Fifth, to address whether changes in agricultural practices has led to adecline in host plant availability, we examined long-term records in the acreage of the solanaceous crops tobacco and tomato (hostplants of two Manduca species) planted on farms in six northeastern U.S. states. The results provide the most comprehensiveanalysis to date of long-term population changes in a regional hawk moth fauna.

Materials and methods

th

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 3/14

Study area, species selection, and record compilation

Our study area in the northeastern U.S. included the six New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,Rhode Island and Connecticut) plus nearby New York (Long Island and the counties bordering the Hudson River) and northern NewJersey (between 40° 7’ N and 47° 26’ N and 66° 58’ and 74° 56’ W; Fig 1). Within this area, we defined records from all but theouter tip of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as “Exposed to Compsilura” areas (where moths arepotentially subject to Compsilura attack) and the remaining records as “Refuge from Compsilura” areas according to [42]. Wefocused on the 26 species of hawk moths that breed in this area and feed as adults and therefore are presumed to pollinate plants([25]; Table 1). Additional species occur in the study area as migrants or are nonfeeding as adults. Due to the difficulty indistinguishing Sphinx gordius from S. poecila, we grouped records for these two taxa and consider them as a single species for thepurpose of species tallies. The two species have similar sizes, life histories and host plants [25]. We also compiled informationrelevant to the hypotheses we tested, including flight activity (nocturnal, which included crepuscular, or diurnal), seasonality of flightperiod (as an indication of the timing of the preceding larval development period when individuals are subject to parasitoidism) andthe growth form of larval food plants from [25] (Table 1).

Fig 1. Map of study area showing the number of hawk moth records compiled from each county.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.g001

Table 1. Species of hawk moths, their size and natural history, and the sample sizes of records compiled for analysis of species declines in thenortheastern United States.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.t001

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 4/14

We compiled information on species, date collected, locality, county, and collector for our focal species from specimens held atmost northeastern U.S. natural history collections known to have significant holdings of hawk moths. We also canvassed thecommunity of academic and private hawk moth collectors to obtain additional records. The Acknowledgments provides a full list ofthe nine museum and 14 private collections utilized. Due to a preponderance of incomplete data on labels of specimens collectedprior to 1900 and incomplete processing and databasing of more recent collections, we restricted the sample to include recordsfrom 1900 through 2012. All records are publicly available at http://www.natureserve.org/conservation-tools/locality-data-northeastern-us-hawk-moths and at Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5435950.v1).

Climate data

To understand possible relationships between climate and moth population trends, we associated climate values withcorresponding moth records by county and year. For each year in the study period (1900–2012), we derived three bioclimaticvariables (named following the terminology of the WorldClim dataset, www.worldclim.org: Bio6, minimum temperature of coldestmonth; Bio10, mean temperature of the warmest quarter; and Bio18, precipitation during the warmest quarter) from monthlytemperature and precipitation following the method of [56]. These variables represent extreme conditions that can influenceoverwintering survival of larvae (Bio6), and survival of adults (Bio10 and Bio18). Directional changes in these variables, such ascould be caused by global warming, could result in changes in abundance of moths in the northeastern U.S. portion of their ranges.The source data consist of 800-meter resolution gridded surfaces from the PRISM LT71 dataset [57], [58]. We calculated the meanof each bioclimatic variable for each county in the study area for each year of the study period, and then associated these valueswith corresponding moth records by county and year for analysis.

Extent of tobacco and tomato farming

To explore the possible relationship between the availability of the solanaceous crops tobacco and tomato as host plants andpopulation trends in the species Manduca sexta and M. quinquemaculatus, we summarized records from the U.S. Department ofAgriculture (USDA) on trends in the area planted in these crops on farms over the course of the study period [59], [60]. Becausecrop statistics are reported by state, we included only the six New England states, which are entirely included in the study area, inthe compilation.

Analyses and assumptions

We first aggregated species records into species “lists” with unique combinations of locality, date, and collector name. We assumedspecies lists represented a finite recording event from which we could derive estimates of recording effort, and that all speciesdetected were collected and deposited in a collection. For each species list, we estimated recording effort using 1) the total numberof individuals collected, regardless of species, and 2) the total number of species recorded within a list (or list length). We assumedthat the number of records and species collected was related to recording effort, such that a higher number of records and speciescollected indicate a higher recording effort [61], [62]. We excluded lists with fewer than two recorded species, as these lists wereparticularly likely to represent incomplete samples [61]. The final datasets we analyzed consisted of 80 and 750 species lists, fordiurnal and nocturnal species respectively. To ensure convergence during model calibration, we focused on the four diurnal and 17nocturnal species recorded in at least ten species lists. We qualitatively discuss the records available for the remaining two diurnaland two nocturnal species.

We modeled whether each species was recorded or not in each list—the species’ reporting rate y (sensu [63])–as a function of theprobability of detection p using logistic generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs). The probability of detection p estimates thelikelihood that a species was reported on a list during a recording event, given that the species was actually present in that countyin that year. Our primary goal was to estimate how the reporting rate of each species varied across years—a measure of thetemporal trend in species’ occurrence. Trends in reporting rate across years may result not only from ecological processes but alsofrom changes in recorder effort. Therefore, we accounted for variation in recorder effort among lists by including a list length term—the log of the number of species recorded in a list (L)–as well as a term for the total number of records collected in a list (records).The inclusion of a year term in conjunction with list-based proxies for recorder effort has previously been reliably used to estimatespecies’ trends from opportunistic data such as museum records (e.g. [49], [50], [51], [52], [53]). To examine the potential effects ofclimate on temporal trends, we also included a linear term for each of the bioclimatic variables examined. We checked formulticollinearity among continuous predictor variables using variance inflation factors and pairwise Spearman’s rank correlations.All variance inflation factors were lower than 2.1 and all pairwise rank correlations were lower than 0.62 (S1 Table); taken together,both measures indicate low multicollinearity among continuous predictor variables. Finally, we controlled for unaccounted spatialrelationships among sites by including a random effect of county, thereby estimating a different intercept for each county i. Westandardized all continuous predictors—by subtracting the mean and dividing by the standard deviation—to facilitate theinterpretation of the relative importance of model coefficients [64].

For each species, we thus considered the following model of reporting rate y at site s in year t for list l as a function of theprobability of detection p (modified from [63]):

(1)

where the parameter β estimates the yearly change in probability of detection across lists; β estimates how probability ofdetection varies with the length of each list; β estimates how probability of detection varies with the number of records collected;β , β and β relate to the three bioclimatic variables; and county is a random effect of mean zero, where variance is estimatedacross counties.

1 23

4 5 6

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 5/14

We used multi-model inference to identify the set of candidate models best explaining reporting rate for each species and rankedthem based on their relative weight of evidence [65], [66]. All candidate models included the variables aimed at controlling forrecorder bias—the fixed terms L and records and the county random term—but varied in their inclusion of the single and combinedfixed effects of year, bio6, bio10, and bio18. We ranked models using the Akaike Information Criterion correction for small samplesizes (AICc: [65]). For each candidate model, we quantified the probability that it was the best model given the data using AICcweights (AIC ). For species where no single model was overwhelmingly supported (i.e., no model with AIC > = 0.9), weconsidered the model set comprising the models with Akaike weights of at least 5% of the best model weight (an evidence ratio of0.05; [67]). We used this set to calculate model-averaged coefficients and standard errors for each predictor appearing at leastonce in the set; we averaged coefficients only over the models in which each predictor appeared. For a summary of the modelsselected for each species see S2 and S3 Tables. All multi-model inference analyses were run using the MuMIn package in R(functions pdredge and model.avg; [68], [69]).

To analyze the relationship between host plant habit (trees and vines versus herbs and shrubs) and whether species declined, weused a two-tailed Fisher’s Exact Test.

Results

We compiled a total of 6,614 records of the focal species within the study area, comprising 2,787 lists of unique combinations oflocality, date, and collector. Numbers of observations and lists were smaller prior to the mid-1960s than afterwards, whereasaverage list length ranged mostly from 1–2 species until an increase in the late 1970s (Fig 2).

Fig 2. Sample sizes of lists of northeastern U.S. hawk moth records, number of lists, and mean list length, or the number of species recorded ineach list, for the period 1900–2012.Records from Refuge from Compsilura areas, indicated in gray, are from the outer tip of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’sVineyard where the Compsilura concinnata parasitoid is presumed not to occur due to unsuitable habitat [42]; Exposed toCompsilura areas, where caterpillars are subject to Compsilura attack, are everywhere else.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.g002

None of the four diurnal species with sufficient sample sizes showed any trend in detection probability (Fig 3). With all lists ofnocturnal species considered, seven species showed declines, six showed no change, and four showed increases in detectionprobability (Fig 3). Removing lists from Compsilura refuge areas resulted in Eumorpha pandorus changing from a significant to anon-significant decline (the changed 95% confidence intervals overlapped zero), Manduca sexta (a crop pest) changing from a non-significant to a significant decline, and no changes in the presence, absence or direction of trends for the remaining 15 species (Fig3). Thus eight species showed declines in at least one of the analyses.

Fig 3. Trend in relative detection probability 1900–2012 in the northeastern U.S. for (a) diurnal and (b) nocturnal hawk moth species.

w w

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 6/14

Detection probability refers to the probability of a species being recorded during each year while accounting for effort, climate,and spatial effects using logistic generalized linear mixed models. Closed circles represent means of the standardizedregression slope for year and error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Declining species are those with error barscompletely below zero, increasing species are those with error bars completely above zero, and species with no trend arethose with error bars that overlap zero. For nocturnal species, dark gray and light gray asterisks represent significant (i.e.,error bars do not overlap zero) temporal trends based on Exposed to Compsilura and Exposed to Compsilura + Refuge fromCompsilura models, respectively.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.g003

Of the four species that were recorded too infrequently for statistical analysis, two or three appear to have declined. We found norecords for Manduca jasminearum in Connecticut, its northeastern distributional limit where it was formerly regularly recorded, after1963. This species persists farther west and south as it was reported in northern New Jersey in 2012, the last year of the study.There were no records of Sphinx lucitiosa, a northern species, in Connecticut later than 1957 or in Massachusetts later than 1973,whereas records for New Hampshire and Maine continue through 1999. Thus these two species appear to have declined sharply inparts of their ranges. S. canadensis is a northern species that was rarely recorded in the study area outside of Maine. Proserpinusflavofasciata is a small, diurnal, northern species for which we encountered only two records, both from Maine (in 1928 and 1991),in our study.

The climate variables included in the model contributed somewhat to explaining variance in hawk moth detection probability. For allspecies, all three climate variables were selected in at least one model of the best model set considered, and so were usefulpredictors of detection probability. However, climate variables were significantly different from zero for only six of the 21 specieswith sufficient samples, and the signs of the coefficients were inconsistent across species (Table 2).

Table 2. Model coefficients for climate variables with associated confidence intervals in brackets, based on the full set of records (Exposed toCompsilura + Refuge from Compsilura localities).Coefficients in bold were significantly different from 0.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.t002

The area planted in tobacco or tomato on New England farms peaked in the 1920s, dropped precipitously during the GreatDepression in the 1930s, rebounded until 1950, then declined again until leveling off after 1985 (Fig 4). The area planted in the twocrops in the 2000s was 13% of the peak in the 1920s.

Fig 4. Temporal change in the area of tobacco and tomato planted in New England.Area charted in 5-yr intervals. Source: [59], [60]; data for tomatoes were not available for 1900, 2005, and 2010.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.g004

Among the nocturnal species for which there were sufficient records to analyze for trends (and ignoring the crop pests Manducasexta and M. quinquemaculatus that feed in agricultural settings), five of the eight tree- or vine-feeding species declined whereasonly one of the seven shrub- or herb-feeding species declined, a nonsignificant difference (two-tailed Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.12).Two of the tree/vine-feeding species that did not decline, Deidamia inscriptum and Sphecodina abbottii, are active only early in theseason in May and June. Restricting the analysis to summer species (when Compsilura populations have built up) results intree/vine feeders being more likely to decrease than shrub/herb feeders (two-tailed Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.029).

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 7/14

Discussion

Inferred population trends

Using existing records of hawk moths in museum and private collections over a 112-year period, we were able to detect statisticaldeclines in eight species of northeastern U.S. hawk moth pollinators, or 38% of the species for which sample sizes were sufficientto allow analysis. Two additional species declined or disappeared altogether from portions of the study area, and a third, Sphinxcanadensis, may have declined in the portion of its range that overlaps the study area. Thus, as many as 44% of the speciesexamined appear to have declined in at least part of the Northeast. Just four species, 19% of species with sufficient sample sizes,increased over the study period.

Three patterns are evident from the results. First, all four diurnal hawk moth species showed no discernible trend in detectionprobability. Second, the two solanaceous crop pest species declined during the study period, consistent with the ten-fold decreasein tobacco and tomato farming in the region. Third, of the remaining 15 species with sufficient records for analysis, all but one of thesix vine- or tree-feeding species that are active during the summer months declined. All but one of the nine species that are activeonly in the spring or feed on shrubs or herbs either showed no trend or increased during the study period. This latter result isconsistent with the hypothesis that Compsilura parasitoidism has played a role in the declines. However, removing the numerousrecords from the Compsilura refuge did not lead to a consistent pattern of increased declines as would be expected if Compsilurawere widely responsible for declines.

We note further that the species that declined tend to have large-bodied late instar larvae, with five of the six species havingforewing lengths of at least 38 mmha, whereas the forewing length of all the species that increased is less than that length. Wecannot say whether large size contributes directly to susceptibility to Compsilura attack or is related to another aspect of thesespecies such as foraging substrate that confers susceptibility. The body size of the species in our sample appears to be associatedwith phylogeny [70], as large bodied species are restricted to just three genera, Eumorpha, Manduca and Sphinx. Without a largersample of species, the effects of phylogeny and body size cannot be disentangled statistically [71].

These results are consistent with previous reports. Each of the eight species recorded as declining in this study were previouslysuspected to be declining in Connecticut [33]. Similarly, the four species that showed significant increases in this study werereported to be common in Connecticut [33]. Sphinx chersis, a species found to have declined in this study, was reported to be rareby [32]. [32] also reported no generalized widespread trend in Hemaris gracilis numbers, which agrees with our finding of no long-term trend in detection probability for this species.

Two of the species for which insufficient records were available for statistical analysis were previously reported as extirpated inConnecticut: Manduca jasminearum and Sphinx lucitiosa [33]. Our compilation is consistent with this observation, although theformer species has recently been rediscovered in south-central Connecticut (D. Wagner, personal communication). M. jasminearumappears to have contracted from much of the extreme northern part of its range (Connecticut), although our records indicate that itpersists in nearby northeastern New Jersey. S. lucitiosa appears to have disappeared from the southeastern edge of its range insouthern New England and northeastern New Jersey. Considering that at least eight collectors have surveyed extensively for hawkmoths in southern New England over the last several decades [33], the rarity of recent records suggests that the two species havedeclined in this region.

This study contributes to a growing body of evidence implicating the introductions of Compsilura in the early 1900s as a contributorto the declines of large moths in the northeastern U.S. The existence of a refuge from the parasitoid in Cape Cod and offshoreislands [42], [31], [35] and the results of field experiments in which larvae of a suitable host species (the browntail moth, Euproctischrysorrhoea) placed in historical habitats were heavily parasitized [38], [42] provide striking evidence in support of this contention.Our observations that declining species were those that feed as larvae in microhabitats or seasons when they are most exposed toCompsilura attack is an additional indication that introductions of the parasitoid have had broad effects on Northeasternlepidopteran abundance. Additional experimentation, such as tethering larvae from increasing and decreasing hawk moth specieson different substrates (e.g., trees, vines, shrubs, herbs) and observing rates of Compsilura attack, would help confirm the patternssuggested by our results.

Both Manduca sexta and M. quinquemaculatus are well-known pests to crops in the family Solanaceae [25]. Tobacco was the mostwidespread solanaceous commercial crop in the northeastern U.S., and the dramatic decline in tobacco and tomato farming in themid-20 century could help explain declines in these two species. Other than these two crops, another solanaceous crop planted inthe study area, potatoes, is planted extensively in northern Maine, but this area is outside of the normal range of either Manducaspecies [72], [25]. These species may use other solanaceous plants that grow in more natural habitat as host plants as they doelsewhere in their range [25], although to our knowledge this has not been documented for our study area. The concordance ofdeclines in both the moths and solanaceous crop farming is therefore suggestive, but other factors could have contributed to thedeclines.

Potential biases from collection data

Inferring population trends from specimen records requires several assumptions to hold true, as described above. The assumptionthat collecting effort is constant [44] was demonstrably not the case in our sample. Moth collectors have argued that the advent ofmercury-vapor lights for attracting moths in the mid-1960s increased collecting efficiency [30]. Indeed, we found that hawk mothrecords for the study area show a marked and sustained increase after this time period. However, because our analysis focused ondetection probability during collecting events relative to other species, an overall increase in hawk moth collection would not haveskewed the results for any one species unless it is substantially more or less likely to be attracted to lights than other species. Toour knowledge, only one species in our sample, Lintneria eremitus, has been suggested to avoid light traps [10]. Moreover, thepredominant trend was of decline, which is counter to the expectation of increases if collecting methods were responsible for thetrends detected.

th

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 8/14

A related assumption that collecting effort is constant across species [44], is hard to evaluate. Hawk moths are collected by nettingat flowers, using lights or bait, or searching for larvae on host plants [25]. Collectors’ objectives vary, resulting in the use of differentmethods at different times and places [73]. The large samples we compiled may have been sufficient to even out these imbalancesif there weren’t temporal trends in the use of specific collecting methods. Separating analyses for diurnal and nocturnal species alsoreduces the influence of collecting method on trend detection.

Bias by collectors toward preserving large, showier, or rarer species is another concern [74], [75], [73]. If this bias remains constantover time, then trend analyses will be unaffected. However, if common species were once shunned but are now collected at the ratein which they are encountered, they would appear to have increased whereas rare species would appear to have declined.Although this bias cannot be ruled out completely, we note that rare species would be unlikely to have sample sizes large enoughfor statistical analysis. Also, the complete disappearance of species from the collecting record, as observed here for parts of therange of Manduca jasminearum and Sphinx lucitiosa, is strongly suggestive, especially when backed up by numerous collectorswith decades of experience [33].

Alternative hypotheses

Alternative hypotheses could potentially explain the trends that we observed. Largescale gypsy moth spraying with DDT andcarbaryl has often been suggested as a factor [29], [30] but neither has been widely used in the last 20 years. The use of Bacillusthuringiensis to control gypsy moths is unlikely to be a widespread cause of declines due to its limited use both spatially andtemporally such that native species could rebound between years when it is applied [38], [32]. Furthermore, [76] showed that evenunder high laboratory doses sensitivity varies drastically among native moth species, although they did not test any hawk moths.

Climate change has led to changes in butterfly ranges in the northeastern U.S. [50] and could be expected to influence hawk mothsin our study area. However, the climate variables we examined were at best weakly related to detection probability of the mothsstudied. Climate change would tend to cause the retraction from the southern edges of ranges and northward range extensions[77]. Although we did not specifically attempt to detect this effect, we note that of the two regional declines that we documented,Manduca jasminearum was a retraction from the northern edge of its range (opposite the climate prediction). In the future, thelonger warm periods brought about by climate change may be expected to benefit a multivoltine parasitoid such as Compsilura [78].

Two other factors, light pollution and land use change, have likely played at least a small role in the patterns revealed in this study,although the relative importance of each is difficult to confirm. Artificial lights can disrupt nocturnal moth behavior [79], butdocumentation of population-level effects is mostly lacking [32], [12]. In our study, many of the declines are geographically restricted[33], whereas artificial lights shine at night in many regions across the study area [38]. For example, lights appear to shine just asbrightly on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket as on the nearby mainland [80], yet many large-bodied moths that have declined inthe mainland remain readily observable on the islands. One possible test would be to examine whether night light data collected bysatellites [81] and summarized by county is related to spatial patterns of hawk moth detection probability. None of the four diurnalhawk moths in our study declined, a result that is consistent with the light pollution hypothesis, but the small number of diurnalspecies precludes this observation from providing strong support.

During the study period, forest cover initially increased as farms were abandoned and the use of fuelwood declined, thendecreased somewhat due to suburbanization [36], [37]. The effects of this profound change in land use on hawk moths is difficult toassess. Most host plants are forest species and therefore the major trend of increased forest cover may be expected to benefitmany hawk moths. However, the extent to which foliage from younger plants in earlier successional stands may be more suitablefor larval development than foliage from older plants growing in mature forests is unknown for most species examined. However,declines in Hyles lineata, a species that feeds on early successional plants, could be related to the transition from agricultural landsto forest.

Forest composition has changed due to fire suppression and more recently because of browsing by superabundant deer(Odocoileus virginianus) [36], [82]. Data on forest composition are limited mostly to intensively studied research plots in restrictedareas [37], and therefore inference about plant species availability for larval foraging across the study area is impossible.Nevertheless, the recent arrival of the introduced emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), a specialist Fraxinus feeder, will likelycause a major reduction in the availability of host plants for Oleaceae-specialist species in the northeastern U.S. (Manducajasminearum, Sphinx canadensis, S. chersis, and S. kalmiae) [83].

Ecological consequences

Incomplete natural history information about hawk moth pollination challenges our ability to predict the ecological consequences ofhawk moth declines in the northeastern U.S. Flower visitation by moths in general is poorly documented [12]. Efforts to documentflower visitation by hawk moths is apparently limited to gardens or open disturbed areas, with few observations of flowers duringnocturnal pollinator visits (e.g., [84], [85]). Plants reported as being visited by hawk moths are typically invasive weeds (e.g.,Lonicera japonica, Centaurea spp.), cultivated plants (e.g., Catharanthus roseus, Petunia spp., Phlox spp., Saponaria officionalis)or native old field species (Cirsium discolor) [25], [85]. Clearly some hawk moths visit rare, native plants. For example, Eumorphaachemon, found to be declining in the study area, visits the threatened orchid Platanthera praeclara in the upper midwestern U.S.[10]. Whether native northeastern U.S. plants suffer pollen limitation as a result of hawk moth declines is unknown, but possible.The hawk moth species found in this study to be declining have noticeably longer tongue lengths (all but one species have tongueslonger than 35 mm) than the species that increased (range 12–27 mm; no data for Darapsa versicolor) [86], [87], suggesting thatthe species that are becoming relatively more common may not be ecological replacements for the declining species. Beyondpollination, hawk moths and their larvae also serve as prey to nocturnal birds and other predators. Populations of these species,such as the eastern whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferous), which feeds on a variety of large-bodied crepuscular and nocturnalinsects such as the species we examined [88] and is declining throughout the northeastern U.S. [89], may be negatively affected bylosses in their prey base.

Conclusions

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 9/14

1.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

2.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

3.

4.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

5.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

6.

This study demonstrates that concern over pollinator declines should be extended to hawk moths. At least ten of the 26 speciesexamined, or more than one-third, were found to be in long-term decline or locally extirpated, whereas four species increased from1900–2012 in the northeastern U.S. Although the causes for the increases are unknown, one factor in the declines appears to bemortality caused by the unintentional effects of the introduced biocontrol agent Compsilura concinnata. Changing agriculturalpractices may have played a role in the decline of two species recognized as crop pests. Other factors surely are at play, andcareful monitoring and experimentation could determine their roles and importance. These results are cause for concern about theecological integrity of the habitats where these moths once were plentiful as well as for the potential that specific native plantspecies may decline due to pollinator limitation. Moreover, the ecological consequences may extend to species that prey on moths.

Supporting information

S1 Table. Multicollinearity among model predictor variables assessed using variance inflation factors.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.s001(DOCX)

S2 Table. Candidate models explaining the reporting rate of hawkmoths.

Numbers correspond to numbers in S3 Table. Only models selected in the best predictor set of at least one species are shown. Allmodels also included a spatial random effect of county.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.s002(DOCX)

S3 Table. Summary of model selection for 21 species of hawkmoths.

Indicated are the number and, in brackets, the weight of evidence (AICw) corresponding to each model selected in the best modelset. Model numbers correspond to models in S2 Table. Models shown were generated using the full set of records for each species.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185683.s003(DOCX)

Acknowledgments

We thank Sam Adams, Philip DeMaynadier, Trish Hanson, John Klymko, Tony McBride, Tim McCabe, Mark Mello, Eric Quinter,Gary Torrisi, Dave Wagner, and Brandon Woo for participating in a workshop to discuss preliminary results of the study, andespecially Larry Gall for hosting the workshop. We are indebted to the curators of the following museums for providing access totheir sphingid holdings: American Museum of Natural History, Cornell University, New York State Museum, Smithsonian, Universityof Connecticut, University of Maine, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, and Yale Peabody Museum of NaturalHistory. We also are grateful to Sam Adams, Joe Garris, Robert Godefroi, Scott Griggs, Warren Kiel, Tony McBride, Tim McCabe,Mark Mello, Michael Sabourin, Ted Sargent, Eric Quinter, Steve Walter, Ben Williams, and Brandon Woo for providing access totheir private hawk moth collections and sharing their personal observations. We thank Trish Hanson from the Vermont Departmentof Forests, Parks and Recreation, Judy Rosovsky from the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative, and Charlene Donahue and volunteerDerrick Perry from the Maine Forest Service for providing regional data. We thank our volunteers Elizabeth Johnson and NellGridley. We thank Regan Smyth for preliminary data analyses and for Fig 1. We thank Marion Harris, Christopher Heckscher,Patrick MacIntyre, Matthew Schlesinger, Aluri Jacob Solomon Raju, Dave Wagner, and two anonymous reviewers for helpfulcomments on previous drafts of this manuscript.

References

Biesmeijer JC, Roberts SP, Reemer M, Ohlemüller R, Edwards M, Peeters T, et al. Parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants in Britainand the Netherlands. Science. 2006;313:351–354. pmid:16857940

Watanabe ME. Pollinators at risk. BioSci. 2013;64:5–10.

IPBES. Summary for policymakers of the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services onpollinators, pollination and food production. Potts S.G. et al., editors. Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity andEcosystem Services, Bonn, Germany; 2016.

Colla SR, Packer L. Evidence for decline in eastern North American bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Apidae), with special reference to Bombus affinisCresson. Biodivers Conserv. 2008;17(6):1379–1391.

Cameron SA, Lozier JD, Strange JP, Koch JB, Cordes N, Solter LF, et al. Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees. Proc Natl AcadSci U S A. 2011 Jan 11;108(2):662–7. pmid:21199943

Bartomeus I, Ascher JS, Gibbs J, Danforth BN, Wagner DL, Hedtke SM, Winfree R. Historical changes in northeastern US bee pollinators related toshared ecological traits. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Mar 19;110(12):4656–60. Epub 2013 Mar 4. pmid:23487768

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 10/14

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

7.

8.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

9.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

10.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

11.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

12.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

13.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

14.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

15.

16.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

17.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

18.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

19.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

20.

21.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

22.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

23.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

24.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

25.

Federal Pollinator Health Task Force. National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators. 2015. https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/federal-pollinator-health-task-force-epas-role.

Atwater MM. Diversity and nectar hosts of flower-settling moths within a Florida sandhill ecosystem. J Nat Hist. 2013;47:2719–2734.

Banza P, Belo ADF, Evans DM. The structure and robustness of nocturnal Lepidopteran pollen-transfer networks in a Biodiversity Hotspot. Insect ConservDivers. 2015.

Fox K, Vitt P, Anderson K, Fauske G, Travers S, Vik D, et al. Pollination of a threatened orchid by an introduced hawk moth species in the tallgrass prairieof North America. Biol Conserv. 2013;167:316–324.

Borkowsky C, Westwood AR. Seed capsule production in the endangered Western Prairie Fringed Orchid (Platanthera praeclara) in relation to sphinxmoth (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) activity. J Lepid Soc. 2009;63:110–117.

Hahn M, Brühl CA. The secret pollinators: an overview of moth pollination with a focus on Europe and North America. Arthropod Plant Interact.2016;10:21–28.

Fox K, Anderson KM, Andres R, Foster MC, Foster CE, Vik D, et al. Nectar Robbery and Thievery in the Hawk Moth (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae)-PollinatedWestern Prairie Fringed Orchid Platanthera praeclara. Ann Entomol Soc Am. 2015 Oct 1;108(6):1000–13.

MacGregor CJ, Pocock MJ, Fox R, Evans DM. Pollination by nocturnal Lepidoptera, and the effects of light pollution: a review. Ecol Entomol. 2015Jun;40(3):187–198. pmid:25914438

Faegri K, van der Pijl L. The principles of pollination ecology. 3rd Rev. ed. Oxford: Pergamon Press; 1979.

Gritsky G. Darwin's Madagascan hawk moth prediction. Am Entomol. 1991;37:206–210.

Johnson SD, Moré M, Amorim FW, Haber WA, Frankie GW, Stanley DA, et al. The long and the short of it: a global analysis of hawkmoth pollinationniches and interaction networks. Funct Ecol. 2016. pmid:28344378

Grunert LW, Clarke JW, Ahuja C, Eswaran H, Nijhout HF. A quantitative analysis of growth and size regulation in Manduca sexta: the physiological basisof variation in size and age at metamorphosis. PloS one. 2015 May 26;10(5):e0127988. pmid:26011714

Hayes MB, Jiao L, Tsao TH, King I, Jennings M, Hou C. High temperature slows down growth in tobacco hornworms (Manduca sexta larvae) under foodrestriction. Insect Sci. 2015 Mar 1;22(3):424–30. pmid:24459098

Schreiber H. Dispersal centres of Sphingidae (Lepidooptera) in the Neotropical region. Biogeographica 10. The Hague-Boston; 1978.

Haber WA, Frankie GW. A tropical hawkmoth community: Costa Rican dry forest Sphingidae. Biotropica. 1989;21:155–172.

Nilsson LA. The evolution of flowers with deep corolla tubes. Nature. 1988 Jul 14;334(6178):147–9.

Whittall JB, Hodges SA. Pollinator shifts drive increasingly long nectar spurs in columbine flowers. Nature. 2007 Jun 7;447(7145):706. pmid:17554306

Ollerton J, Alarcón R, Waser NM, Price MV, Watts S, Cranmer L, et al. A global test of the pollination syndrome hypothesis. Ann Bot. 2009Jun;103(9):1471–80. pmid:19218577

Tuttle JP. The hawk moths of North America. Washington, DC: Wedge Entomological Foundation; 2007.

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 11/14

26.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

27.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

28.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

29.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

30.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

31.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

32.

33.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

34.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

35.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

36.

37.

38.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

39.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

40.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

41.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

42.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

43.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

44.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

Grant V. The systematic and geographical distribution of hawkmoth flowers in the temperate North American flora. Bot Gaz. 1983;144:439–449.

Sheviak CJ, Bowles ML. The prairie fringed orchids: a pollinator-isolated species pair. Rhodora. 1986;88:267–290.

Nilsson LA. The evolution of flowers with deep corolla tubes. Nature. 1988;334:147–149.

Hessel SA. A preliminary scan of rare and endangered Nearctic moths. Atala. 1976;4:19–21.

Schweitzer DF. Status of Saturniidae in the northeastern USA: A quick review. News Lepid Soc. 1988;1(January- February):4–5.

Goldstein PZ. Life history of the imperial moth Eacles imperialis (Drury) (Saturniidae: Ceratocampinae) in New England, U.S.A.: distribution, decline, andnutritional ecology of a relictual islandic population. J Lepid Soc. 2010;42:34–49.

Schweitzer DF, Minno MC, Wagner DL. Rare, declining, and poorly known butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) of forests and woodlands in the EasternUnited States. Morgantown (WV): U.S. Forest Service, Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team; 2011. FHTET-2011-01.

Wagner DL. Moth decline in the northeastern United States. News Lepid Soc. 2012;54:52–56.

St. Laurent R. Updated distributional data for Citheronia sepulcralis Grote & Robinson, 1865 (Saturniidae: Ceratocampinae), with a new host plant record.J Lepid Soc. 2016;70:9–14.

Goldstein PZ, Morita S, Capshaw G. Stasis and flux among Saturniidae and Sphingidae (Lepidoptera) on Massachusetts' offshore islands and thepossible role of Compsilura concinnata (Meigen) (Diptera: Tachinidae) as an agent of mainland New England moth declines. Proc Entomol Soc Wash.2015;117(3):347–366.

Foster DR. Land-use history and four hundred years of vegetation change in New England. Principles, patterns and processes of land use change: somelegacies of the Columbian encounter. Scope Publication. Wiley, New York. 1995:253–319.

Foster DR, Aber JD, editors. Forests in time: the environmental consequences of 1,000 years of change in New England. Yale University Press; 2006 Apr1.

Boettner GH, Elkinton JS, Boettner CJ. Effects of a biological control introduction on three nontarget native species of saturniid moths. Conserv Biol.2000;14:1798–1806.

Kellogg SK, Fink LS, Brower LP. Parasitism of native luna moths, Actias luna (L.)(Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) by the introduced Compsilura concinnata(Meigen)(Diptera: Tachinidae) in central Virginia, and their hyperparasitism by trigonalid wasps (Hymenoptera: Trigonalidae). Environ Entomol. 2003Oct;32(5):1019–27.

Arnaud PH Jr. A host-parasite catalog of North American Tachinidae (Diptera). U.S. Dep. Agric. Misc. Publ. 1978;1319:1–1860.

Weseloh RM. Implications of tree microhabitat preferences of Compsilura concinnata (Diptera: Tachinidae) for its effectiveness as a gypsy mothparasitoid. Can Entomol. 1982;114(7):617–622.

Elkinton JS, Parry D, Boettner GH. Implicating an introduced generalist parasitoid in the invasive browntail moth's enigmatic demise. Ecology. 2006Oct;87(10):2664–72. pmid:17089674

Nichols JD, Williams BK. Monitoring for conservation. Trends Ecol Evol. 2006 Dec 31;21(12):668–73. pmid:16919361

McCarthy MA. Identifying declining and threatened species with museum data. Biol Conserv. 1998;83:9–17.

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 12/14

45.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

46.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

47.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

48.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

49.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

50.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

51.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

52.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

53.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

54.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

55.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

56.

57.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

58.

59.

60.

61.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

62.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

Colla SR, Gadallah F, Richardson L, Wagner D, Gall L. Assessing declines of North American bumble bees (Bombus spp.) using museum specimens.Biodivers Conserv. 2012;21:3585–3595.

Graham CH, Ferrier S, Huettman F, Moritz C, Peterson AT. New developments in museum-based informatics and applications in biodiversity analysis.Trends Ecol Evol. 2004 Sep 30;19(9):497–503. pmid:16701313

Hortal J, Borges PA, Gaspar C. Evaluating the performance of species richness estimators: sensitivity to sample grain size. J Anim Ecol. 2006 Jan1;75(1):274–87. pmid:16903065

Isaac NJ, Strien AJ, August TA, Zeeuw MP, Roy DB. Statistics for citizen science: extracting signals of change from noisy ecological data. Methods EcolEvol. 2014 Oct 1;5(10):1052–60.

Szabo JK, Vesk PA, Baxter PW, Possingham HP. Regional avian species declines estimated from volunteer-collected long-term data using List LengthAnalysis. Ecol Appl. 2010 Dec 1;20(8):2157–69. pmid:21265449

Breed GA, Stichter S, Crone EE. Climate-driven changes in northeastern US butterfly communities. Nat Clim Chang. 2013 Feb 1;3(2):142.

Barnes M, Szabo JK, Morris WK, Possingham H. Evaluating protected area effectiveness using bird lists in the Australian Wet Tropics. Divers Distrib.2015 Apr 1;21(4):368–78.

Zeilinger AR, Rapacciuolo G, Turek D, Oboyski PT, Almeida RP, Roderick GK. Museum specimen data reveal emergence of a plant disease may belinked to increases in the insect vector population. Ecol Appl. 2017 Apr 29.

Rapacciuolo G, Ball-Damerow JE, Zeilinger AR, Resh VH. Detecting long-term occupancy changes in Californian odonates from natural history andcitizen science records. Biodivers Conserv. 2017:1–7.

Roberts RL, Donald PF, Green RE. Using simple species lists to monitor trends in animal populations: new methods and a comparison with independentdata. Animal Conservation. 2007 Aug 1;10(3):332–9.

Isaac NJ, Pocock MJ. Bias and information in biological records. Biol J Linn Soc. 2015 Jun 15;115(3):522–31.

O’Donnell MS, Ignizio DA. Bioclimatic predictors for supporting ecological applications in the conterminous United States: U.S. Geological Survey DataSeries 691;2012.

Daly C, Halbleib M, Smith JI, Gibson WP, Doggett MK, Taylor GH, et al. Physiographically sensitive mapping of climatological temperature andprecipitation across the conterminous United States. Int J Climatol. 2008;28:2031–2064.

PRISM Climate Group. PRISM gridded climate data. Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR. 2013. http://prism.oregonstate.edu.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) [Internet]. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS): USDA Economics, Statistics and MarketInformation System c1975–2016. 2016. http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1000.

USDA [Internet]. Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University: USDA Census of Agriculture Historical Archive c1840–2002. 2016.http://agcensus.mannlib.cornell.edu/AgCensus/homepage.do.

Szabo JK, Vesk PA, Baxter PW, Possingham HP. Regional avian species declines estimated from volunteer-collected long-term data using List LengthAnalysis. Ecol Appl. 2010 Dec;20(8):2157–69. pmid:21265449

van Strien AJ, Termaat T, Kalkman V, Prins M, De Knijf G, Gourmand AL, et al. Occupancy modelling as a new approach to assess supranational trendsusing opportunistic data: a pilot study for the damselfly Calopteryx splendens. Biodivers Conserv. 2013;22:673–686.

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 13/14

63.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

64.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

65.

66.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

67.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

68.

69.

70.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

71.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

72.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

73.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

74.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

75.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

76.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

77.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

78.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

79.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

80.

81.

82.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

Isaac NJB, van Strien AJ, August TA, de Zeeuw MP, Roy DB. Statistics for citizen science: extracting signals of change from noisy ecological data.Methods Ecol Evol. 2014;5:1052–1060.

Schielzeth H. Simple means to improve the interpretability of regression coefficients. Methods Ecol Evol. 2010;1:103–113.

Burnham KP, Anderson DR. Model selection and inference: a practical theoretic approach. New York: Springer-Verlag; 2002.

Johnson JB, Omland KS. Model selection in ecology and evolution. Trends Ecol Evol. 2004 Feb;19(2):101–8. pmid:16701236

Coyle JR, Hurlbert AH. Environmental optimality, not heterogeneity, drives regional and local species richness in lichen epiphytes. Glob Ecol Biogeogr.2016;25:406–417.

Bartoń K. MuMIn: multi-model inference, R package version 1.15.5; 2015.

R Core Team. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna; 2016.

Kawahara AY, Mignault AA, Regier JC, Kitching IJ, Mitter C (2009) Phylogeny and Biogeography of Hawkmoths (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae): Evidence fromFive Nuclear Genes. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5719. pmid:19492095

Ives AR, Zhu J. Statistics for correlated data: phylogenies, space, and time. Ecol Appl. 2006 Feb;16(1):20–32. pmid:16705958

Schweitzer DF. Survival of freezing and subsequent summer eclosion by three migratory moths: Manduca sexta and Hyles lineata (Sphingidae), andHelicoverpa zea (Noctuidae). J Lepid Soc. 2006;60(2):101–103.

Wehi PM, Whaanga H, Trewick SA. Artefacts, biology and bias in museum collection research. Mol Ecol. 2012 Jul;21(13):3103–9. pmid:22916347

Klots AB. Notes on melanism on some Connecticut moths. J N Y Entomol Soc. 1964;72:142–144.

Petersen FT, Meier R, Larsen MN. Testing species richness estimation methods using museum label data on the Danish Asilidae. Biodivers Conserv.2003;12:687–701.

Peacock JW, Schweitzer DF, Carter JL, Dubois NR. Laboratory assessment of the effects of Bacillus thuringiensis on native Lepidoptera. EnvironEntomol. 1998;27:450–457.

Parmesan C. Ecological and evolutionary responses to recent climate change. Annu Rev Ecol Evol Syst. 2006;37,637–669.

Karuppaiah V, Sujayanad GK. Impact of climate change on population dynamics of insect pests. World Journal of Agricultural Sciences. 2012;8(3):240–6.

Macgregor CJ, Evans DM, Fox R, Pocock MJO. The dark side of street lighting: impacts on moths and evidence for the disruption of nocturnal pollentransport. Glob Chang Biol. 2016. pmid:27251575

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA Visible Earth: Night Lights—Flat map. 2012. https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=79765.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). 2016. http://ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/dmsp.html.

Schweitzer DJ, Garris R, McBride AE, Smith JAM. The current status of forest Macrolepidoptera in northern New Jersey: evidence for the decline ofunderstory specialists. J Insect Conserv 2014.

11/30/2017 Are pollinating hawk moths declining in the Northeastern United States? An analysis of collection records

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185683#abstract0 14/14

83.

84.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

85.

View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

86.

87.View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

88.

89.

Wagner DL, Todd KJ. Ecological impacts of emerald ash borer. In: Van Driesche R, Reardon RC, editors. Biology and control of emerald ash borer.Morgantown (WV): USDA Forest Service; 2015. USDA Technical Bulletin FHTET-2014-09. p. 15–63.

Lovell JH. The visitors of the Caprifoliaceae. Am Nat. 1900;34:37–51.

Tartaglia ES, Handel SN. Nectar plant preferences of Hemaris (Sphingidae: Lepidoptera) on co-occurring native Cirsium and non-native Centaurea(Asteraceae) inflorescences. J Pollinat Ecol. 2014;13:184–187.

Cuthrell, DL. Insects associated with the prairie fringe orchids, Platanthera praeclara Sheviak & Bowles and P. leucophaea (Nuttall) Lindley. Unpublmasters thesis 1997, North Dakota State Univ, Fargo, ND.

Miller WE. Diversity and evolution of tongue length in hawkmoths(Sphingidae). J Lepid Soc. 1997;51(1):9–31.

Bent AC. Life Histories of North American [birds]: Cuckoos, goatsuckers, hummingbirds and their allies. US Government Printing Office; 1940.

Sauer JR, Hines JE, Fallon JE, Pardieck KJ, Ziolkowski DJ Jr, Link WA. The North American Breeding Bird Survey, Results and Analysis 1966–2013.Version 01.30.2015. USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, MD. 2014. https://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/bbs.html.